Schwarzenegger hires Bush aides but stays distant from president
By LAURA KURTZMAN, Associate Press Writer
Saturday, April 1, 2006
(04-01) 09:04 PST SACRAMENTO, (AP) --
Despite his rocky relationship with the White House, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has surrounded himself with a team of former Bush aides to run his re-election campaign.
The latest addition came this week with veteran Republican ad man Alex Castellanos, a master of political attacks who helped Bush's 2004 campaign team transform Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., from a war hero into weakling in the eyes of many voters.
Choosing such a partisan team might seem an odd fit for a candidate like Schwarzenegger, whose re-election hopes rest on winning back the very voters who have turned so sharply away from the president. Bush lost California by more than a million votes in 2004.
But given Schwarzenegger's vulnerability this year, some analysts say he was shrewd to hire consultants who know how to eviscerate the opposition when their own candidate is weak.
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http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2006/04/01/politics/p090444S24.DTL
Alex Castellanos is the right-wing Cuban-American genius who created
the underhanded "DemocRATS" "subliminable" crap for a Bush tv commercial.